Daniel B. Smith
Auteur de Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de Daniel B. Smith
Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination (2007) 153 exemplaires
English Grammar Exercises with answers Part 1: Your quest towards C2 (Volume 1) (2018) 2 exemplaires
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1977
- Sexe
- male
- Professions
- Professor, The College of New Rochelle
- Organisations
- The College of New Rochelle
Membres
Critiques
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Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 8
- Aussi par
- 1
- Membres
- 622
- Popularité
- #40,476
- Évaluation
- 3.2
- Critiques
- 29
- ISBN
- 19
I guess you could say that the causes of anxiety (the effects are that you feel like shit—sick, you know), for Dan are primarily three: sex, mother, and work, essentially. The sex part I kinda kinda relate to, if primarily through my fantasy life. When I was most sick, I thought I was Harry Styles, basically. I was not…. Not that, “Harry Styles”, (Draco Malfoy Voice: Harry, Styles!), means what I thought it did then. Just too much energy, you know, as though you were trying to read by a light-bulb and put a whole nuclear generator’s power into it. You get anxious; it’s too much. And then, he came from a line of anxious people, through his mother. I can almost relate, as my mother is a dry, if anxious, alcoholic, and his mother got driven to therapist school by her anxiety. Still, his mother sounds more capable than mine, although we’re all biased when it comes to our own mothers, often negatively, right. I mean, my mom has always been anxious that I exercise; she wants me to eat more, and stop walking for exercise. But she also has many of the trappings of spirituality even if she doesn’t do hard, practice-y things herself, and has transmitted some of her dispositions and resources to me.
And Dan also felt that his Jewish identity played into his condition, that there was a social factor. This has also been the case with me. I am essentially Anglo, the culture that likes to disappear and not acknowledge itself, but which is at the same time as particular as anything else, you know, and I’ve been part of it, not least when I was most sick. (My family also has a sort of vestigial Irishness through the inter-generational disease of alcoholism, even if neither me nor my parents are part of the RCC or possess any other “Irish” characteristics. Which would be what, anyway? Time-traveling IRA activist? Adorably Anglo?) I was really, really Anglo, in a very Disneyified, isolationist way. Anything macho or self-sufficient, anything nonwhite, in almost any way, bothered me, and drove me to dig my rabbit warren deeper and deeper, as though I was expecting an artillery bombardment, and then the next time I met something not white-femme-mystique, it was worse. Daniel’s situation is intricate in that while he wasn’t especially secure in his Yiddishkeit or happy to be a Jew, or involved with the Jewish community in almost any way, or willing to be friends with other Jews, he still felt that many of his foibles and problems were quintessentially Jewish, you know. Many Jews aren’t terribly Jewish especially in any classical way, but, still have this Yiddish-shaped hole where their secure cultural identity should be…. Well, not that I would understand.
Anyway, it’s not a book that’ll hurt you to read, or not to read, I suppose…. And yet, haven’t the aliens deputized me to read, All, earth-books? 😸👽
After-note: I think the source of confusion for some people here was that it’s really a mental health memoir, but some people probably looked at it like a comedy memoir, because it is a little funny, and then wonder why it didn’t do that better….
It is basically a negative book/a book of faults (I use the term in a technical sense), like how Holocaust museums make him feel bad as a Jew (it’s a gut reaction thing), and also grand things, like his philosophy readings (Danish Soren, mostly is what I remember). In a way it’s kinda funny I think—although I have a twisted sense of humor—but it’s not comedy, and it’s not positive. “Because I Come From a Crazy Family”, that psychiatrist’s memoir, is a mental health memoir that’s funny. (shrugs)… (plus d'informations)